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Lecture Series:
​Decolonizing the History and Future of Knowledge ​

What if our narratives of scientific history need revision?
​What if knowledge did not begin where we think it did?
​What would the future of science and technology look like if we reexamined who created them?
The Grand Challenge: To be in the West, but not of it...

PAST LECTURES

Fatimah Jackson

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On January 15th, 2024, Howard's own Prof. Fatimah Jackson delivered the third annual MLK Jr. Day lecture as part of the QBL's "Decolonizing the History and Future of Knowledge" series, bringing to bear her group's expertise in biological anthropology, computational geophysics, human genetics, machine learning, and socioculturally informed science to reconstruct the origins, migration patterns, and (epi)genomic histories of the African empires, kingdoms, and peoples involved in and affected by the four major passages (Trans-Atlantic, Trans-Saharan, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean trades) during the Millennia of Enslavement.

Maurice Wallace

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On January 16th, 2023, Maurice Wallace delivered the second annual MLK Jr. Day lecture as part of the QBL's "Decolonizing the History and Future of Knowledge" series, exploring the evolution of two distinct deliveries of “I Have a Dream”, their relationship to the collective memory of an earlier one, and MLK's enduring imprint on the world's sonic imagination.

Philip Kurian

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On Saturday, April 30th, 2022, QBL Director Dr. Philip Kurian discussed recentering our knowledge systems at a AAAS-sponsored public engagement event organized by Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.  By highlighting the pioneering work of Howard University scholars to recover historical narratives of discovery by East Africans, his presentation drew out the dark sides of the European enlightenment and the value judgments that continue to shape our theologies, our histories, and ultimately our imaginations of the possible.

John Slattery

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On Tuesday, April 5th, 2022, John Slattery delivered a lecture on The Enduring Problem of Eugenics, and Other Evils. Dr. Slattery's lecture delved into the complex history of eugenics in order to question the general nature of scientific ethics throughout history.
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Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

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On February 22nd, 2022, Ngũgĩ
wa Thiong'o delivered the inaugural Black History Month lecture as part of the QBL's "Decolonizing the History and Future of Knowledge" series. Prof. Ngũgĩ's lecture was followed by a discussion featuring panelists Ruha Benjamin, Dag Herbjørnsrud, and Philip Kurian.

Ruha Benjamin

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On January 17th, 2022, Ruha Benjamin delivered the inaugural MLK Jr. Day lecture as part of the QBL's "Decolonizing the History and Future of Knowledge" series, giving a multimedia portrayal of how artificial intelligences and big data-informed realities are shaped by structural racism. 

Dag Herbjørnsrud

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 On December 7th, 2021, Dag Herbjørnsrud kicked off the QBL's "Decolonizing the History and Future of Knowledge" lecture series, highlighting how the distortions in our maps, our mathematical histories, and our models of reality must be rebalanced.